Abby Sunderland will write a book

"All that's left of the voyage of Wild Eyes are my memories," says 16-year-old solo sailor Abby Sunderland, explaining why she plans to write a book.

ByRebekah DennJune 14, 2010

Abby Sunderland, the 16-year-old who had hoped to become the youngest sailor to circumnavigate the globe solo, says she wants to write a book to memorialize her adventures on her boat Wild Eyes.

Rich Hartog/AP

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Abby Sunderland, the 16-year-old briefly feared lost at sea while attempting a solo sailing trip around the world, plans to write a book.

After being rescued from her crippled sailboat, “Wild Eyes,” after a storm in the Indian Ocean, Sunderland wrote on her blog that “within a few minutes of being on board the fishing boat, I was already getting calls from the press. I don't know how they got the number but it seems everybody is eager to pounce on my story now that something bad has happened.”

She doesn’t feel up to interviews, she said on the blog, but has started writing herself.

“At first I decided that I wasn't going to write a book. But then I started to think about all the good times Wild Eyes and I have had together. All that's left of the voyage of Wild Eyes are my memories, eventually they will get fuzzy and I won't remember all the details. I don't want that to happen. Wild Eyes and my trip have been the best thing I have ever done or been through and I don't ever want to forget all the great times we have had together, or the bad ones for that matter.”

That’s a pretty universal reason for anyone to record treasured memories. And Sunderland, an experienced sailor whose family has been criticized for letting her attempt the trip, might well welcome a firsthand chance to tell her story. She had already made a start on her blog, writing in her first post last July about planning an around-the-world voyage after years of dreaming about it.

“I had begun to think that dreams are meant to be no more than dreams and that in reality dreams don't come true,” she wrote at the time.

Despite the background arguments about risk and responsibility, skill and maturity, it’s hard to read that and not be glad that Sunderland got both the chance to try out her dream – and the safe return that will allow her to write her story.